Raptor wrote:
"Fully seven in 10 U.S. adults agree a “good, hard spanking is sometimes necessary to discipline a child,” while less than half as many disagree (29 percent) according to the 2014 wave of the General Social Survey released Tuesday by NORC at the University of Chicago. After a modest drop in popularity in the late-1980s and 90s, support has stabilized, fluctuating between 68 and 72 percent in the past decade."http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/03/05/millennials-like-to-spank-their-kids-just-as-much-as-their-parents-did/ so because a bunch of people got stuck in a cycle of abuse, that makes it ok somehow?
if you feel forced to hit your kid, you've lost control of being a parent.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/moral-landscapes/201309/research-spanking-it-s-bad-all-kids wrote:
Why is spanking ineffective for changing behavior in the longterm?
Approaching this from a behaviorist perspective, conditioning by punishment (pain) requires that the consequence always occur immediately after every instance. When you touch a hot stove with a bare hand, you get burned, period. This does not occur with the behaviors parents spank for—parents are often not around to see them or are not willing or able to spank immediately afterwards.
Why is spanking ineffective for increasing desirable behavior?
Spanking does not convey positive guidance on how to behave in a particular situation, only how not to behave if a threat of punishment is at hand. Children learn positive behaviors from practicing actions that work, ones that lead to a sense of belonging and competence. They internalize what they practice and what their family practices. They learn reasons for their actions from what they hear and are told, but active practice has the deepest impact.
Why else is spanking harmful?
It undermines trust. Children trust their parents just a little less. They are more likely to step back from the relationship and build a self-protective shield around themselves in terms of relationships generally. Children can learn to mistrust the motives of others and become more threat reactive in social situations. It can lead to aggressive expectations—they are ready to aggress first before they are aggressed against.
Spanking is harmful for even more reasons, the review indicates:
Spanking destroys mental health.
Spanking increases delinquency and criminal behavior.
Spanking makes it more likely the child will be physically abused.